IT consultancy contract: client version

Not yet reviewed

This contract is for use by any business looking to take on an IT consultant. There is great advantage in presenting your own contract, drawn to protect your interests. The consultant could work in any field of IT, from advising on hardware or the architecture of a piece of software, to analysing and reporting on network performance or website visitors.

About this contract

This document is suitable for use by any organisation in any industry who wishes to hire a consultant to advice on information technology or systems. It gives you strong protection of your intellectual property to which the consultant is likely to have access.

The size of the consultant’s organisation is not really relevant. As drawn, we provide strong terms that will suit you if you are engaging a firm, but these can easily be lightened to suit taking on a self-employed expert.

We have structured this contract so that it allows for the possibility of future assignments under the same terms. Legal matters are separated from the schedule of work to be done, so that if you do want to the consultant to carry out further work, all you need do is to update the schedule and refer to the same terms as the basis of the new contract. There is no additional editing to do if you expect never to re-employ.

This document is based on our standard consultant contract for a client. The differences are related to our assumption that your business requires a higher level of intellectual property protection than most, together with better control for you, the client, over matters related to work conditions and security.

Accordingly, the type of work to be performed could be varied. It may be advising on hardware or company strategy; project managing the installation of software systems; analysing data and recommending change, or some other form of reporting that requires expert knowledge.

There are options in several areas, notably contract summary, payment systems and working arrangements.

Contents

Definitions and interpretation

Preliminary legal matters

Avoidance of conflicts of interest

Consultant's status and obligations

Work management procedure

Fees and expenses

Option for use of sub-contractors

Work for other clients

No competition

Confidentiality

Intellectual property

Who owns new intellectual property

Duration and termination

Mutual indemnities

Other legal provisions

Publicity and announcements

Miscellaneous matters

We include over 2,500 words of helpful and informative drafting notes so that you can edit the document easily to your exact requirements.

Draftsman

This document was written by a solicitor for Net Lawman. It complies with current English law.

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